The Unanswered Question
by Shini no Megami
Summary: Al decided that if Brother hadn’t already blown his eardrums out, he was going to twist his ears till they bled.


Al was fuming by the time he actually reached the door to their flat. After returning home from a long day of work at the factory, there was nothing he liked less than having no fewer than five of his neighbors approach him to complain about the horrible cacophony (they all refused to call it music) that had been blaring from their apartment all afternoon. Even now, standing outside the door the sound was overwhelming, and Al decided that if Brother hadn't already blown his eardrums out, he was going to twist his ears till they bled.

"Brother!" he shouted as he all but threw open the door against the sound. "Brother!! Turn it down!"

Scowling at the lack of response, Al stormed into the living room where Ed was sprawled haphazardly across the couch, the heating pad shoved carelessly under the pillow he had his left knee propped up on. Normally this image spurred feelings of pity in Al for his poor Brother who suffered so horribly sometimes when the weather changed that he couldn't go to work. Today however...

Al stomped over to the phonograph and yanked the needle up, turning the volume dial all the way down for good measure. Ed, who had been bobbing his head to the music with his eyes closed, lurched up and after a few seconds of disorientation glared at his younger brother.

"Al! What the hell?! I was listening to that!"

"The entire neighborhood was listening to that!" Al shouted back. "I could hear it two blocks away!"

Ed had the good sense to look ashamed in the wake of Al's anger.

"Didn't sound that loud..." he muttered repentantly and sinking back down into the cushions, looking every bit a chastised child. Al scowled, hating that he could never stay angry at Ed, especially when he looked so damn pitiful, and smacked Ed lightly upside the head.

"What on earth were you listening to anyway?" Al asked, walking over to the phonograph to examine the record. "I didn't know we owned anything like this."

Ed smiled brightly. "We didn't. I ordered it at the record shop last month, as it just came in today. The store was nice enough to send somebody over with it."

Al nodded, relieved Ed hadn't gone down to the store by himself and resolved to stop in on his way to work in the morning and thank the owner.

"Charles Ives?" he asked as he turned the record carefully in his hands. "Who's that?"

Gold eyes lit up with excitement, and Ed pushed himself up till he was balanced on the edge of the cushion.  
"He's this American composer who likes to write really weird music. There's this one song on there, Country Band March, I think, that's supposed to sound like a bunch of drunken amateurs playing music!"

Al stared blankly down at the record, then up at his Brother. "And that sounds good?"

"It's not supposed to sound good, it's supposed to sound real." Ed stressed, grin growing larger. "He also writes songs that have two different keys going on at the same time!"

"Do you even know what that means?" Al asked skeptically, putting the record back down in the phonograph.

"...well, no, but it sounds really weird!" replied Ed enthusiastically. "The best part is that he writes music he wants to hear, not what other people want to near. That's how music should be."

Al smiled, thinking that maybe that was shy Ed really liked this Ives guy, because Ed had always danced to the beat of his own drum, no matter what anyone else or plain common sense had to say.

"So..." Ed started, looking up at Al slyly, "Wanna listen to it with me? You might like it."

Al smiled warmly, started up the phonograph and sitting down next to Ed. "Just as long as we keep it down so that we're not sharing it with the neighbors too, Brother."

* * *

SnM: Yay! Another fic I've been working on for awhile. For those of you who don't know, Charles Ives was a real American composer at the beginning of the 1900's known for composing music that was just _slightly_...odd. For most of his life his music went ignored and unperformed because it utilized techniques like polytonality, tone clusters, quarter tones, and lots of dissonance. It wasn't until near the end of his life that the experimental nature of his music began to be truly appreciated by the music community, and Ives was recognized as a true visionary. This fic is named after "The Unanswered Question" by Ives, a piece that utilized a technique called _simultaneity _or collage music-quoting little bits of other songs and squishing them all together in one piece. This technique was not seen again until the sixties when it gained a whole movement.

If you're wondering, the Director of Bands at my university is the leading Ives authority in the country currently, so yes, I know a lot of random about him. It was actually during one of his lectures on Ives that I got the idea for this fic, cuz I could totally see Ed liking the off-kilter nature of Ives' music. If any of this has interested any of you, go look Ives up on wikipedia. Some of his music is really interesting (especially the "Country Band March" piece I mentioned, it's awesome) and worth listening too if you're a big music person.

R&r


End file.
